Measures to reduce government debt through austerity are surprisingly popular among many voters, despite the immediate economic costs. However, we have an incomplete understanding of what drives individuals to support these policies. In this paper, we examine whether citizens' moral attitudes toward private debt influence their preferences toward public debt policy. Given that private debt often invokes strong moral emotions rooted in religious beliefs, we argue that many people rely on their attitudes toward personal debt to evaluate the complicated macroeconomics of public debt policies. Using both observational and experimental survey data from Italy and Brazil (N=3000), we show that people's moral judgments about private debt repayment are strongly correlated with their attitudes towards public debt consolidation and repayment, even after controlling for other important factors like personal experience with debt and financial literacy. Additionally, we demonstrate that experimentally manipulating people's beliefs about whether defaulting on private debt is "right" or "wrong" also changes their attitudes toward public debt policy. Our research sheds light on the role of moral emotions in shaping public opinion on economic policy.